I specifically forced my mom to sing this song from Man of La Mancha to me at night again and again. I really loved that song in an intense, embarrassing way; it's totally cheesy Broadway stuff. I just remember lines like, "To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause." At five years old, you're like, "Oh my God!" You want to do this quest, and the reward is you're going to be hated and beaten and go to hell. When you're a kid, you're in the safety of your parents' protection, but you start to notice this danger around you. There's a high stakes aspect to it.

I remember always listening to lyrics as a kid-- that was immediately where my brain went. "I Get Around" by the Beach Boys was my first memory of fixating on weird slang in lyrics. They were like, "I'm a real cool head/ I'm making real good bread," and I was like, "What's that?" Of course, being a head back then had connotations of dropping acid, but I just pictured that he was just this huge, colossal floating head.

When I was in fifth grade, I made a list of my three favorite songs: "Maneater" by Hall and Oates, "Invisible Touch" by Genesis, and "She's Not There" by the Zombies. "She's Not There" has a mysterious, haunting off-ness. [Singer Colin Blunstone] doesn't really explain what the title is supposed to mean-- "she" just disappears into thin air.

I grew up in Meriden, New Hampshire, population of 500. My dog used to sleep in the middle of the street all day long because no cars would come. Nobody really told me about any music, so I was randomly flailing around.

I'd go to this store about a half an hour into town and buy records there. If I hadn't heard of the band, I said to myself, "Who are these losers? Why don't they just give it up?" I didn't think it was cool for something to be underground-- the unforgiving attitude of a dumb little boy. You got a little taste of that attitude when Arcade Fire won the Grammy. The implication was, "If I haven't heard of them, they're utterly worthless."

My taste was all over the place because I had just left junior high, which was a stifling experience. My graduating class had about 28 kids and it was very hierarchical. The popular kids dictated what everybody had to listen to, so if you listened to something else, you'd keep it secret. They'd be listening to hair metal and Eazy-E, stuff like that. We had just gotten cable a couple years earlier after having only two channels, and that was when "120 Minutes" was on MTV. So I was like, "Oh God, there's all this weird music out there." I would never tell anybody that I liked this stuff.

"If you admitted that you liked 'Nothing Compares 2 U' in my junior high, you might as well have been like, 'I'm gay-- just go ahead and beat me up.'"

A big one was Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U", but if you admitted that you liked that song, you might as well have been like, "I'm gay-- just go ahead and beat me up." It was tantamount to being a wussy pariah if you liked something that was, to them, the weirdest thing in the world. I even remember thinking my name was embarrassingly weird, just because it wasn't Matt or Chris.

Nowadays, I'm not ashamed to admit I like anything. There are certain things that I'll get in a fight about if somebody tells me it's bad: "Fuck you, dude, Steely Dan is awesome." But then there are songs like Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It for the Boy". I really like that song, and I'm aware that it sucks. I just have a sentimental attachment to it, in a way that you go get high and eat a Burger King hamburger at 3 a.m., like, "Yes, that is a crumpled up burger wrapper-- I'm not proud of it."

When I was 20, I was about to graduate college in Minnesota. I was a church mouse. I didn't have many friends. I wrote a lot-- for the paper, for the literary magazine. I always wanted to be an artist, but I never knew any artists. I didn't have the understanding that it was a real career. I was really instilled with this idea from my dad, which was like, "You gotta go out there and get a job." The more I had my head in that mind state, the more frantically depressed I got. I was really terrified by the vision of being this work-a-day dude with his dreams crushed out of him, especially because I was really awful at everything practical. I suddenly had this revelation which was, "Man, fuck it! I'm young. I can do whatever and if I completely fail and fuck up, I've got the second half of my 20s to pull my shit back together." I don't know why I hadn't thought of that before.

I was pretty firmly ensconced in indie rock at this time. I had a college radio show and I was desperate to find out about the newest underground thing.

"There's something about Tracey Thorn's singing where it sounds like she's your girlfriend who's crying and trying to explain something to you that makes her sad."

Everything But the Girl put out Walking Wounded around then. I really loved Tracey Thorn's voice. She's a secret influence on my own singing, actually. On "Mirror Ball", Tracey's very sad but not overly melodramatic, and that style of singing hit a chord with me. There's something about her singing where it sounds like she's your girlfriend who's crying and trying to explain something to you that makes her sad.

I started Okkervil River in 1998. By 2001, when I was 25, that was the very start of when we toured. We couldn't get a single show; we couldn't get anyone to listen to us. We got press before we got fans, and we got some folks to help us book tours. Travis Nelsen, our drummer, hadn't joined at that time but he was booking us on these van tours where we'd just bleed away all of our money, begging the audience to let us sleep on their floors. There'd be a ten-person audience, and this freaky fucking dude would come out and be like, "Yeah, you can totally crash on my dirty, scary floor."

This was also before iPods, so everyone would just be listening to CDs that we would bring. [Former band member] Jonathan [Meiburg] and I would listen to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks constantly-- you could make a case that it's the best rock record of all time. There's this incredible spiritual theme, a yearning, and a deep nostalgia that runs through it. A beautiful sense of forgiveness. If you were like, "You only get to listen to one album ever," I'd be like, "Please don't take away my Astral Weeks."

"You could make a case that Astral Weeks is the best rock record of all time."

One song [from that record] that was massive for me at that time was "Madame George". It's about a transvestite, although Van denies that, which is insane. It's this incredibly detailed character sketch, with these boys coming by to play cards and drink. There's a ridiculous, pathetic quality to the character, but also this love and admiration and worship. It sounded like it came from another world.

By 2006, the band was more successful. I was finally able to quit my day job at the video store. I took a road trip by myself around the country-- I'd stay at a place until I felt like I wanted to go on, and I would go write in shitty hotels.

I ended up in Brooklyn around the time I was writing [2007's] The Stage Names. Girl groups were really big for me around that time. "May My Heart Be Cast Into Stone" by the Toys has this Biblically epic theme to it-- it's a toweringly self-annihilating song.

One of the most depressing things in the world to me is how people start to get frozen in their 30s. You'll hear your friends say, "I don't know any new bands," or, "Oh, did you hear there's a new record by this band?" And it'll be some indie rock band where it's like, "Really? They're still around?" [laughs] Some people might snarkily say that about us.

"I fucking hate when I hear people in their 50s say, 'I'm too old to change.' Fuck you, you're lucky to be alive, asshole."

A music fan that doesn't have it in them to find new music anymore is like absolute death to me. What are you even doing being alive if you're not trying to constantly grow? And I don't mean just in terms of music, but in terms in pushing yourself to try different foods and watch different kinds of movies. The world encourages you to lock into a particular routine. I fucking hate when I hear people in their 50s say, "I'm too old to change." Fuck you, you're lucky to be alive, asshole. Why don't you try to grow? It's a gift to get to be born and not suddenly die of cancer or get hit by a car. One day, you're gonna be a rotting body in the ground and you're gonna be like, "Wow, I kinda wish I listened to new music from ages 30 to 70."